These Lands Belong to All of Us - Domestic Terrorism and National Wildlife Refuges

Beauty and ugliness...

A Meadowlark is singing in the breeze...it's early February in California which actually means that spring is practically here. In other places, biplanes are spraying pesticides and fungicides, beekeepers are setting out hives in the almond groves, and fields are being plowed and readied for planting. About 95% of the floor of the California's Great Valley is being readied for crop production, with some hopes that the larger snowpack will allow irrigation allotments for the first time in a number of years.

But not here. I spent the afternoon on a deserted road that traveled around the Tule Elk habitat at the San Luis National Wildlife Refuge. Nothing human was happening here. On this old floodplain of the San Joaquin River the native grasses were sprouting bright green shoots, and the elk were grazing in the distance. The Salt Slough was flowing, and the water was uncharacteristically clean. Dozens of Meadowlarks were singing their alluring songs, and numerous hawks, the Red-shouldered, the Red-tails, and Harriers were patrolling, looking for ground squirrels emerging from their burrows.

Tule Elk at San Luis. There were just two left in the 1880s

On this small patch of valley floor, environmental managers of the Fish and Wildlife Service are trying to restore a bit of the valley to something that resembles the land the once provided food and shelter to millions upon millions of birds, mammals, reptiles, amphibians and many others. The Great Valley was once America's Serengeti Plains, one of the richest wildlife habitats on the planet.

Black-necked Stilts

I haven't said much about the criminal drama that unfolded last month at the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge. I was waiting for some kind of resolution. Four of the terrorists are still holding out at the refuge wondering where all their brave "patriot" friends are, so the situation remains unresolved. But sixteen of the gun-toting thugs are under indictment, and LaVoy Finicum lies dead in the ground, a self-appointed "suicide by cop". Some people are calling him a patriot and a martyr. I call him a common criminal who ran a roadblock and then tried to draw a gun on law enforcement officers.

I believe it is a juvenile Red-tailed Hawk

This isn't opinion, this point of view is a matter of law. People decided to take up arms against a duly elected representative government and tried to effect political change with guns. These were criminal acts that followed years of threats and intimidation. These people can try to pretend they were following some bizarre interpretation of the Constitution, but the Constitution makes clear that the powers of government do not lie in the hands of people with guns trying to steal public land for their own private use.

Grasslands at San Luis. Brewers Blackbirds in the tree in the distance.

I'm not sure these people even understand the principle of civil disobedience that brought about the Civil Rights Act and the Voting Rights Act. In that era people broke the law on purpose, but they expected to be arrested and were ready to be imprisoned to bring about legal changes in the country. They didn't carry heavy weaponry and threaten to kill public officials. They instead paid a heavy price themselves, even to the point of death in too many cases.

A Loggerhead Shrike

But most of all, I'm enraged that these people think that they somehow deserve unfettered free access to land they have no claim to. The states of the American West ceded control of these lands as a condition of statehood. They received trust lands as part of statehood, and almost without exception those state lands are wasted, denuded, and closed to public access (read the story here from High Country News). The efforts of the federal government to administer the remaining public lands has been a patchwork of success and failure, but on the whole there is a recognition that these lands belong to all of us, and should be treated that way. Sometimes the use involves resource extraction and profits for certain groups and corporate entities, but much involves the public good.

Salt Slough, a tributary to the San Joaquin River

Private landowners are often responsible and are responsive to efforts to preserve part of their holdings for wildlife. But they can't be expected to understand and act on the fact that their portion of the landscape is a small piece of a wildlife network with connections from the far northern Arctic to the tip of South America. Only the federal government can do this, and its role in wildlife management is both legal and supported by the vast majority of the citizens of our country. Only the federal government can provide protection for the breeding grounds of migratory geese and cranes in the far north and at the same time provide wintering grounds in California and other parts of the southwestern states. Only they can provide resting places for the birds at refuges between the two extremes of the migratory routes. And only the federal government can enter into diplomatic agreements to protect animals whose migratory pathways carry them over international borders.

Great Blue Heron on Salt Slough

Federal management of grazing lands has not been perfect, but there are many examples of cooperation between different stakeholders in the debate. The vast majority of ranchers are law-abiding citizens. But those who decide to take up arms against the government must be dealt with proportionately. Anyone who threatens the life of another, and acts on that threat needs to be in prison, and their weapons taken away. The moment these criminals brandished guns they lost their place at the table.

Double-crested Cormorants

It was a beautiful day today at the San Luis National Wildlife Refuge. I could wander over the grasslands and imagine how this valley once was. So much has been lost, but much still remains, and it was both a privilege and a right to be there on this really early "spring" day. I salute those who work at these refuges and who are fighting to do the right thing, sometimes in the face of threats and intimidation. Thank you for the good work that you do.

Beaver or Muskrat?

The San Luis National Wildlife Refuge protects the floodplain of the San Joaquin River between Turlock and Los Banos in California's Great Valley. There is an excellent visitor center, and a number of available auto tours and hiking trails. For more information, check out their web page: http://www.fws.gov/refuge/san_luis/.

California's Precious Disappearing Prairies: A trip to the Willms Road Pond

One of California's precious landscapes is being lost, again. The state once had a vast prairie extending for 400 miles from Redding to Bakersfield. The grasslands were of course put to the plow, and agriculture rules the environment today. Less than 5% of the original grasslands of the Great Valley remain, and they've been under renewed assault in just the past few years.

The problem is nuts, and specifically almonds. The valley and nearby hills produce 80% of the world's supply, and they constitute the largest agricultural export we produce right now. The trees use prodigious amounts of water, but that hasn't stopped a vast expansion of the orchards into the remaining prairies on the east side of the valley where the Sierra Nevada foothills begin. With a crippling drought and no reservoir irrigation possible, the landowners are simply drilling wells and pumping the water from the ground. The supply of groundwater is limited and in severe decline. I am pretty sure these wells cannot provide more than a few year's worth of water before they'll be dry.

Still, the prairies aren't gone yet, and I took a break from taxes this weekend to catch the sunset from Warnerville and Willms Roads east of Oakdale. We drove through miles of newly planted orchards, and into some of the grazing lands beyond. It was a stunning reversal from the appearance last year of dead grass and dry streambeds. We've had adequate amounts of rain on the valley floor, with upwards of 10 inches in December, and a few good storms in February to make up for a record dry January. The grass was green and growing, and the ephemeral streams and vernal pools were filled with water. We just need more snow higher up in the mountains to get well from the drought, as the snowpack is less than 20% of normal right now, with the end of the rainy season looming.

We were following on the heels of an unusually active thunderstorm system. Our weather is pretty benign most of the time, but this storm dropped upwards of a foot of snow in the high country. The clouds were an incredible sight in the last glow of the dying sunset.

There were animals out and about. The Western Meadowlarks were present in large numbers, trying to attract some mates. They have a most beautiful song, which I captured on a brief video that you can listen to at my Geotripper's California Birds site (click here).

The story was the same with the Red-winged Blackbirds. There were dozens, if not hundreds, at our favorite little stock pond on Willms Road. They were strutting about displaying their bright red and yellow shoulder patches.

If some of the smaller animals weren't paying careful attention, they might not have noticed the hawk lurking in the almond trees. I almost didn't see it myself as we passed.

The biggest surprise came as we passed the small cliff along the creek that crossed Warnerville Road. I was expecting or hoping to see some burrowing owls, but the biggest hole was occupied by the raccoon seen below. When it noticed us, it just up and disappeared into the burrow.

The remaining prairies have persisted because no one could think of how to make money from them other than grazing cows or sheep. Now that almonds are a lucrative source of money, there is a target painted on the ranchlands in the Sierra Nevada foothills. I hope the state gets around to writing the groundwater regulations so we can get a handle on the unrestrained development that is taking place right now. It's clearly unsustainable in the long run.

Birds of My Neighborhood: Geotripper Explores a Bit of the "Original" Great Valley

In the last few weeks I've been documenting the bird species in my local neighborhood, primarily around the cow pasture that sits a few blocks from my house. Much to my surprise, I was able to identify at least 25 different birds in a few days of walking, and I blogged some of my favorite pictures so far (here and here).

A cow pasture and an urban neighborhood feel a bit out of place, like an environment where the species make do, and opportunistic species like crows, pigeons and starlings dominate. We decided to go looking for birds in a more "natural" setting and headed south to the San Luis National Wildlife Refuge. We were greeted by the hawk on the entrance sign.

I say "natural" in quotes, because the refuge is not exactly a section of of the valley that retains its primeval wilderness nature. There are very few of those areas still in existence. It is instead an effort to return some reclaimed agricultural lands to wetlands status, and the location and pattern of the swamps is carefully regulated to encourage natural plant growth to allow the migratory and native birds to flourish. In essence the refuge is farming birds. That sounds kind of negative, but it's not meant that way. The wetlands stops on the Pacific Flyway have been decimated by agricultural and urban development, and this is a great effort to undo some of the damage.

We headed out a short looping auto tour off of Landers Road and slowly made our way down the dirt road. The swamps had recently been flooded, and birds were all over, although they tended to be rather shy. A great many of our shots are at extreme zoom.

The American Coots (Fulica americana) were present in abundance. They seemed the least disturbed by our intrusion.

There was a Great Blue Heron (Ardea herodias) in the reeds, but I only got a few shots before it headed deeper into the marsh.

I think the bird below is a Say's Phoebe (Sayornis saya) that lurked in the low weeds and grass at the edge of the capabilities of my camera. With the distinctive orange belly I thought it was a robin at first.

 The bird below may be a sandpiper or willet (any assistance appreciated!).

And finally I got a few shots of the most common bird that we could see that  day, the Red-winged Blackbird. This pair was kind of meek about showing off their red plumage...

 But the one below had no problem!

The Other California: Dreams of Avarice and the First Gold Rush

The Santa Clarita Valley is a suburb north of the San Fernando Valley, a place one drives through while following Interstate 5 to other places. I've been through it dozens of times on my travels, but I haven't usually had a lot of reasons to explore the place. It seems like the whole valley consists of new housing developments and fast-food rows. Oh, and Magic Mountain Amusement Park. But that's the thing about the Other California. There are always surprises in this state, no matter where you go. The strangely sloping hills and rugged mountains that ring the valley hide some interesting secrets.

Yesterday's post was a mystery question, and as the commenters correctly surmised, the Santa Clarita Valley is the location of four very intriguing geological sites. Stay tuned for the other three in coming blog posts. Today I want to talk about the very first gold rush in California's history.

Most people in our state are familiar with the Gold Rush, the one in 1848 in which James Marshall discovered flakes of gold in the Sierra Nevada foothills at Coloma while building a sawmill for John Sutter. The forty-niners. The Mother Lode. Black Bart and Joaquin Murrieta. Fewer people realize that this seminal event was actually the second gold rush in California's history.

Before the Mexican-American War, California was still part of Mexico, and large ranchos had been established in many parts of the territory. The Del Valle Rancho was established on 48,000 acres of the Santa Clarita Valley in 1839, under the ownership of Antonio Del Valle. In 1842, his brother-in-law Francisco Lopez y Arbello was taking a nap under a large oak (reputed to be the one in the picture at the top of the post) during which he dreamed of being surrounded by gold. A short while later he pulled some wild onions out of the ground, and found gold flakes adhering to the roots. California's first gold rush had begun.

Compared to the one that followed in 1848, the rush was relatively inconsequential. The Mexicans were not very interested in advertising the find to the world at large, and the gold played out after only a few years. It did however mean that Mexicans who were familiar with mining methods were situated just a few hundred miles from the Sierra Mother Lode. They played an important role in many of the early gold discoveries in 1848 and 1849.

The discovery site is now preserved as Placerita Canyon State Park just off Highway 14 near the town of Newhall. There are few signs of mining left, but the canyon is a pleasant place to explore. We saw woodpeckers and hawks during our short visit. Los Angeles County Parks administers an excellent nature center with an unusually detailed display of the local rock types. A nice network of trails can be followed, including a paved handicapped accessible trail to the Oak of the Golden Dream (top of the post).

Speaking of golden dreams, keep your eye on the north side of the road as you return to Highway 14. Ensconced in the oak woodland you will see a somewhat bizarre looking development. This is the Golden Oak Ranch, a permanent movie set that has been owned by the Disney Corporation since 1959. Even though you can't visit the place, you've probably seen it many times over in the movies. And if you make movies, you can rent the ranch!

This link to the California Geological Survey has the classic story of the California's gold rushes, originally published in the 1948 Geologic Guide to Highway 49. In the next post we will take a closer look at the rocks in Placerita Canyon. It turns out they are kind of old. Well, really old.

Vagabonding across the 39th Parallel: Crossing the Real "Loneliest" Highway

Vagabonding across the 39th Parallel is an informal exploration of the geology of an interesting slice of the American West that I followed in July. We spent the night in Mono Lake, and on this day, we needed to cross a very lonely landscape. A number of years ago, Highway 50 from Fallon to Ely was declared "America's Loneliest Highway". It's notable for having only a handful of settlements about 70-80 miles apart, and while insulted at first, the towns embraced the label (you can get t-shirts that note that "I survived the loneliest highway". After our day on Highway 6 from Benton to Ely, I've decided I would have nominated a different road...

Photo by Mrs. Geotripper

From Benton, CA to Ely NV we traveled 250 miles, and saw but a single village, Tonopah (population of around 2,600). Oops, there was also Coaldale, population 50, but I don't think I saw it. The stretch from Tonopah to Ely, 168 miles, had not a single service. Take the wrong car, and you would be out of gas before reaching your destination.

Lonely, but not uninteresting. As I've said before, the back of beyond in Nevada is one of my favorite places to explore. Still, I've not been on Highway 6 very often, and we had a bit of time to explore on this trip. Our first distraction was the semi-ghost town of Benton Hot Springs just before the Highway 6 junction. People live there, and there is even a bed and breakfast, but the town is mostly of a century ago. Several abandoned cabins recall places like Bodie.

We crossed the state border a short time later, and stopped to have a look at the highest point in Nevada, Boundary Peak. At 13,147 feet (4,007 m), it is actually the shorter of the two peaks in the picture below. Montgomery Peak, on the right is At 13,441 feet (4,097 m). In the most literal sense, the highest peak in Nevada is a bump on the side of California mountain. Understanding that state lines and the resulting high points are totally artificial concepts, I'm going to talk in the next post about the mountain that should have been Nevada's highest. All the same, Boundary Peak and the rest of the White Mountains are a spectacular mountain group, and would have merited national park status if they occurred anywhere besides in the rain shadow (and the attention shadow) of the Sierra Nevada.

We were entering the heart of the Basin and Range Province, a region where the earth's crust has been stretched and torn apart into a series of fault-block mountains, and deep sediment filled valleys. The tectonic action happened very quickly (in the geological sense), so rivers were disrupted, and most of them drain into the adjacent valleys where they evaporate, or sink into the ground. Water in the Basin and Range will not reach the Pacific Ocean.

Moments later, we encountered the first herd of wild horses (if this kept up, we weren't going to get anywhere!). One was grazing at the side of the road, and posed quite nicely for us. I discussed the wild horses a few weeks ago, and the issues surrounding their very existence (short version: they belong here). A beautiful hawk soared above as we watched the herd (identification welcome!).

An hour later, the town of Tonopah rose out of the mirages on the highway. We decided to stop and have lunch, seeing as how the next town was 168 miles away. More on Tonopah in a different post; our journey would land us back here nearly two weeks later.

photo by Mrs. Geotripper

We started making progress in the afternoon, but one more major distraction presented it self a few miles past Warm Springs (a ghost settlement). It was the Lunar Crater Volcanic Field (which I mentioned in a post a few weeks ago). The region was rocked by violent caldera eruptions around 25 million years ago which produced widespread rhyolite tuff deposits. Starting about 4 million years ago, and most recently only about 20,000 years ago, basalt magmas reached the surface, producing around 95 cinder cones and numerous lava flows.

The most striking volcanic feature in the field is Lunar Crater itself, which is not actually a volcano. It is a maar, a huge pit produced when magma approached the surface and encountered groundwater, which flashed to steam and exploded. The crater is 430 feet deep and 3,800 feet in diameter.

The crater is 7 miles south of Highway 6 on a gravel road (which was very well graded when we were there). It has been designated a National Natural Landmark and a Bureau of Land Management Backcountry Byway. The wind...the wind was practically hurricane force up on the rim (I admit to exaggeration, but not by much).

Another distinctive cone in the volcanic field is Easy Chair Crater, a cinder cone with a very unusual crater. It turns out that the cinder cone erupted first, and a maar explosion followed, producing the off-centered pit.

 This is really lonely country. We did not see a single other visitor while we were there.

The youngest cone in the field is Black Rock Crater, which lies just north of Highway 6. Having erupted only about 20,000 years ago, the lava flow looks exceedingly fresh.

The highway crosses a quarry that exposes some marvelous layers of cinders. Some of them contain large crystals of olivine and other mantle minerals that were carried up through the crust as xenoliths.

I picked the wrong angle to see what kind of coin I used for scale. It's a quarter. The fragments are used in road foundations and railroad beds. They are also used in gardening stone, but I bet few of these have been put to such use, seeing as how the nearest garden is many miles away!

Late in the afternoon, we arrived in Ely, Nevada, a relative metropolis in this empty countryside, with a population of around 4,300. We set up camp in an unexpectedly nice KOA campground with a view of the surrounding mountains (they are not always known for nice tent sites in my experience).

 The nearly full moon rose over the Schell Creek Range. It was a spectacular sight!

Our goal for the next day was to check out the mountain that should have been Nevada's high point, and to finish our journey across the Basin and Range Province. It will be in the next post...